


a heart of glass

by adariel (orphan_account)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Down Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Art School, Dance School, Drama & Romance, Eventual Smut, Inspiration, M/M, Mystery (?), Romance, Slow Burn, Suspense, Teen Angst, angst & fluff, art lessons, dance lessons, starts out pretty fluffy and then gets Really Intense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-01 23:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8642614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/adariel
Summary: The door slammed open with a loud bang, causing Yuuri to jump to his feet in shock and drop the sketch he was holding behind him. It fluttered to the ground in what could have been slow motion as a young boy sprawled gracelessly on the floor from the momentum of his kick, but he wasn't the focus of Yuuri's attention.Standing in the doorway with his lips parted in surprise was the same man sketched over and over in Yuuri's work. His elegant form, his pale skin, his eyes the color of the jaded sea - he was as if the ink had walked right off of the page and stood in front of him now.For a split second Yuuri saw nothing but hours upon hours spent slaving away, creating the silver-streaked man who haunted his dreams. And now he stood here in front of him with a lip curved up slightly, unmoving.But then he breathed in, and the illusion shattered like glass.





	

**Author's Note:**

> there will be several points throughout this fic where youll ask yourself: 'what is this? a scene from a harem anime?'  
> and the answer will probably be _yah, it is._
> 
> enjoy!!

On a freezing cold January morning, the students of St. Petersburg Academy of Performance Arts and Design made their debut in Detroit. They brought the first snow of the winter with them, and it coated the world in a sheet of blinding white - and they were just that, blinding, but at the same time impossible to look away from. 

Transfer students were somewhat rare in Detroit, seeing as it wasn't the most popular of places to visit. States such as New York, California, and Florida had much more recognition among tourists. It was more than likely that the St. Petersburg students would have gone there too if it hadn't been for the chain of events that brought them there.

It started with a fire - and one could argue that, in the end, it had ended with a fire as well.

The source of the fire was still unknown but it had swallowed the ancient and beautiful building like a starving beast. In the hours between twilight and dawn the ageless, cathedral-like structure had been reduced to ash and a skeletal frame. Everything within it - the priceless paintings and sculptures, billions of dollars worth of supplies, the years' worth of ancient architectural design, all of it was gone. 

It was only the Academy's connection to the Detroit University of Visual Arts that kept it afloat. While there certainly weren't enough funds available to cover the massive debt the school was now in, they offered to enroll the students of St. Petersburg Academy of Performance Arts and Design for free until another alternative was presented.

While DUVA was hardly as exquisite as St. Petersburg's estate, it held its own. It offered all the necessary accommodations and had on-campus boarding with fairly nice rooms. The students of St. Petersburg would be on-site as well, which presented one of the biggest problems - in the end it had been settled by placing one to two students as roommates with current DUVA students.

It solved both the lack of rooms and the student divide. Students of DUVA were encouraged to take one or more roommates, and in exchange they would not only receive all of the essentials (extra beds, etc.), they would also have their tuition reduced per roommate.

Which was how Yuuri Katsuki had ended up with two new Russian roommates.

It hadn't been his decision, though - his parents had made it for him and since they had chipped in a lot to pay for his enrollment he was helpless against their decision. 

Still, his solitary and comfortable life was going to get a lot more interesting in the next few months.

* * *

 

The most popular of the St. Petersburg students was the one with hair the color of water under the moonlight and eyes bluer than the cloudless sky - and this was nothing new for him. He was, without a doubt, one of the biggest faces of the Academy back in Russia and it was only logical that he kept his position in Detroit.

Victor Nikiforov.

The women and men alike fell at his feet like leaves in Autumn, and as such he stepped over them just as carelessly. He didn't so much as bat an eyelash at any of the groveling students around him, seeming to exist in a world where the only thing he cared about was his own dancing: with the exception of the two people he ever spoke to, who were just as beautiful as he was.

The first of them was Mila Babicheva, the fieriest of the trio but certainly with good reason when she had to stand on the same platform as two men. She never let her gender define her and yet she was always elegant and walked as if the ground would shatter beneath her at any given moment. There were rumors floating around that she slept around with celebrities for fun, but there were so many unanswered questions shrouding her that she could have been more of a mystery than Victor himself.

The second was probably one of the most aggressive Russians of the entire school, who spoke with a tongue coated in poison: Yuri Plisetsky. His young age and bad attitude might have been disadvantages for other dancers, but for Yuri it seemed to be a large percent of his appeal. He glared at the world with eyes colder than the winters in St. Petersburg and apparently the only person in the world to ever see him smile was his grandfather, who passed away just a few months before the school burned down.

The three of them - Victor, Mila, and Yuri - had captured the attention (both malicious and honest) of every single student at DUVA. And they behaved as if they were the tyrants of the University, ignorant of everything and everyone around them, too caught up in their own fame to recognize anything else.

They were the glittering, alluring deities that held control over every person they encountered.

The moment that they stepped onto the campus grounds on that early January morning, the world shifted around them.

"This place makes the slums of St. Petersburg look like  _raï_ ," Mila remarked, her voice rising and falling with a thick Russian accent.

“The slums of St. Petersburg are heaven to you anyways, you hag.” Turquoise eyes cut towards the red-headed girl as a smirk curled at his lips. It soon dropped once no response was received and instead was replaced with a scowl. “You do have a point though, this place is… is like beer next to vodka.”

“As if you have ever had either of those things,” Mila barked a laugh. “You’re three years younger than Victor and I, I’d be surprised if you have been weaned from your mother’s milk yet.”

“What are you trying to say, huh?” Yuri bristled as he stuffed his hands in his pockets and sized her up. “Maybe I  _have_  had vodka before. How would you know?”

Mila opened her mouth to reply when they were interrupted by a chiming laugh from the boy in front of them. When Victor looked over his shoulder he had a wide smile on his face that made both Mila and Yuri do a double take.

“Sorry, sorry,” Victor apologized, his English airy and light in comparison to their rather thick ones. “It just amazes me that you can both bicker just as fluently in English as you can in Russian.”

“....” Yuri surprised expression quickly faded to an irritated one as he kicked the ground and looked away. “Shut up,  _ass._  You don’t know anything.”

Unlike Yuri, Mila just grinned as she stepped forward and looped an arm through Victor’s casually, glancing up at him through her lashes.

“Would you rather I speak in Russian,  _Vitya_?” Her voice was soft and flirtatious and Victor glanced down at her with a raised brow.

“No, I think it’s more appropriate to speak the language of the country we’re in,” Victor said after a moment, sliding out of her touch with a little uncomfortable smile. “Unless you’d prefer to speak Russian – it isn’t up to me to stop you, after all.”

“Christ,” Yuri breathed, seemingly in awe as he glanced towards a rather disgruntled-looking Mila. “He’s untouchable!”

Mila sent him a scathing look and hissed something in Russian that didn’t sound overly friendly. He flinched back a bit but still had a fairly self-satisfied expression.

“Either way,” Victor spoke up again, oblivious, “I’m starting to look forward to this. I’ve never been in America before!”

“Neither have we, dumbass,” Yuri muttered, but the slight curiosity in his expression gave him away as he glanced around them. “Don’t get your hopes too high. I hear the food sucks.”

“Of course you would only care about the food, Yuri,” Mila laughed as she let her gaze wander.

The two continued to argue back and forth about Yuri’s priorities and Victor let them fade into the background as usual, his attention turning to the rusty-looking campus in front of him. Despite its lack of an elite appearance, there seemed to be a lot of things lurking in the cracks of the brick and mortar walls that drew Victor in.

Despite Yuri and Mila’s arguing, Victor smiled to himself.  _Maybe I can find the inspiration I’ve been looking for here._

God only knew it had been too long since he’d been inspired. Maybe the fire wasn’t such a bad thing – maybe there was something hiding here waiting for him to find it that would unlock the part of himself that had crawled away to die years ago.

_Only time will tell._

Life had a way of doing that, throwing opportunities at him when he least expected it. For now, though, they had an assembly to get to –

“Eh, Victor,” Yuri cut into his thoughts and poked him in the back of the head. “Isn’t the assembly hall  _that_ way?”

\- and less than five minutes to get there.

_Maybe,_  Victor repeated to himself, letting out a soft sigh.  _Or maybe my life will continue to be at a standstill and I’ll keep chasing my tail._

* * *

 

Throughout the entire two-and-a-half hour assembly, not a single eye strayed from the transfer students, and most of those eyes were glued to the three who were the center of attention. Even the St. Petersburg students kept close watch on them, searching for an example, a guide in this new territory.

Yuri Plisetsky didn't doubt that if any one of them started revolting, the rest of the student body would follow like obedient disciples. They'd burn this school to the ground the second that either he, Victor, or Mila pulled out an unlit match.

There was a certain beauty to this power, but it was like the smell of roses - alluring at first but sickening the more you smelled it. Yuri found himself constantly trying the borders, pushing his limits, and every time the others followed like lovesick puppies, like Victor's stupid poodle.

Yuri knew for a fact that if it hadn't been for Victor he would have never been the center of attention. The thing was, he didn't know whether to thank Victor for it or hate him for it.

He'd met Victor at the dance studio - unsurprisingly, it was where he had met Mila Babicheva as well. They had already known each other for a while, it seemed, and to Yuri they always seemed to be in their own little world, closed off from everyone else by a bulletproof glass box. He was young than them, a first year in comparison to their fourth years. 

Speaking naturally, he should have never encountered them. If it hadn't been for his grandfather, he would have never met them.

At the age of 76, on the second Wednesday of September, Yuri's grandfather went into sudden cardiac arrest and died.

The doctors told him later that the attack had occurred about an hour after practice ended and that it had taken about twenty minutes for his grandfather to die. It had taken twenty minutes that must have dragged by like nails in tar for the convulsions to stop and for death to wrap ungrateful arms around his grandfather. 

Yuri had been planning to go home at the normal time but after a weak practice in the studio he had left a voicemail to his grandfather saying he would be late. In the end, it had been his own ambition that had stolen his grandfather’s live away.

Yuri had received the call from his mother about an hour after his grandfather had died and Yuri was about to head home. He remembered dropping the phone so suddenly that it shattered against the concrete under him, and the sound of the case of a tiger that his grandfather bought him cracking in the silent night –

_He sank to the ground, the weight of the shock filling his mind with lead. The asphalt cut into his skin but it was one of those things you only noticed because it hurt too much to notice anything else. He was hyper aware of everything, of the silence of St. Petersburg after dark, of the golden glow of traffic lights against the road that was still wet from the rain._

Guilt had a way of tearing you apart slowly, like disease in flesh, slow and torturous. Even today Yuri could feel its nail sinking into his skin whenever he thought of it, and he wondered vaguely that if Victor hadn’t been there that night practicing as well, where he would be today.

He still didn’t know by what forces Victor had chosen to step out of the dance studio then – maybe it had been hours later and Yuri didn’t notice because he was waist-deep in grief.

_“Why are you sitting out here in the cold? Winter’s on its way, if you aren’t careful you’ll get sick.”_

Victor’s voice had been the same then as it was now, which made sense because it was only a few months prior. It made no sense that it had been such a short time ago and yet it felt so far away.

_“You can’t afford to let yourself get sick at this age,” Victor continued as he sank down into a crouch beside Yuri, looking sideways at him. “Your body is at its physical peak. If you get weak now you’ll be feeling it until you’re old and frail.”_

Victor talked a lot, which was surprising now that he thought about it. He had become a lot more sparing with his words lately and Yuri couldn’t help but wonder why that was.

_Victor moved until he was embracing him, and Yuri stiffened for a moment – physical contact made his skin crawl – but when he felt the weight of a large coat around him he realized Victor wasn’t trying to make a move on him. Victor pulled back a little to tighten the coat around Yuri’s shoulders and get a better look at his face._

Yuri knew exactly what he had looked like in that moment, his face paralyzed in an expression of horror, eyes wide yet unable to release the tears that burned in his throat. He must have scared the shit out of Victor, then – still, it didn’t explain his reaction.

_Instead of saying anything Victor simply pulled back and sat down next to Yuuri, right there in the middle of the parking lot. He didn’t say anything for a long time and Yuri could feel the ice in his bones slowly thawing away as the warm coat helped circulate his body heat._

_After what could have been hours of silence Victor finally spoke up. What he said was so different from what Yuri had expected (something along the lines of ‘are you okay’ or ‘do you want to talk about it’) that it made him forget about his grandfather for one terrible second._

_“Have you ever tried borsch before?”_

Victor had always been a man of surprises, and Yuri learned later that it was probably one of the biggest things he was known for. It even reflected in his dancing – constantly doing what you wouldn’t expect. It was almost like getting whiplash, watching Victor dance.

_“How the hell could I have not tried borsch before?”_

_Yuri didn’t expect for his voice to sound as weak as it did and it only succeeded in pissing him off to no end, especially at the wise little smirk that Victor gave him in response. Before Yuri could make another retort Victor suddenly stood up and held out his hand to Yuri._

_“You never know, Mila hadn’t even heard of solyanka until I told her about it and she’s lived here all of her life.” Victor tilted his head. “Come on, let’s go get some borsch, then – there’s no better way to warm up on nights this cold.”_

_“That’s creepy – “ The words blurted from Yuri’s mouth before he could stop to consider the generosity of Victor’s offer, but he plowed on anyways with a slight scowl. “You’re older than me and you’re offering to take me to dinner? How do I know you won’t kidnap me?”_

_Victor laughed out loud then as he took his hand back and stuffed it in his pocket. “You’re right. I guess I’ll just go get some borsch for myself… since I’m being such a creepy old man.”_

_“That wasn’t what I meant!” Yuri flinched; he sounded like a moron. He leered at Victor’s bemused expression. “Just – fine, I’ll go with you to get borsch, but you’re paying. And if you try anything I’ll kick your ass. I’ll have you know I was taught_ ninjutsu _when I was five.”_

_“_ Ninjutsu _?” Victor raised his eyebrows in questioning. “I’ve never heard of it, but it sounds scary. I’ll make sure to not kidnap you, then.”_

_“I’m not a kid.” Yuri glared at him as he stood up, instinctively grabbing the coat as it started to slip off of his shoulders. Victor took notice and smiled just a little._

_“Feel free to keep the coat. It doesn’t fit me.”_

_“Take your stupid coat!” Yuri started to wrestle it off but the zipper was caught on his shirt. He fumbled with it for a moment before Victor reached out and rested a hand on his head._

_“I’m serious. You’ll freeze without a proper jacket.” Victor’s solemn tone suddenly brightened as he patted Yuri’s head enthusiastically. “And you’re the king of all-things-Russia, right? Honestly, you ought to know by now you can’t go anywhere in St. Petersburg without a proper coat.”_

“Assembly dismissed! Go Impalas!”

The announcer was met by an unenthusiastic drawl from the audience as they all rose from their seats and started chattering amongst each other. Yuri could still feel a dozen eyes on him as he yawned and stretched his arms over his head, stiff from sitting for so long. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and noticed that Mila was missing.

He whipped his head around to stare at Victor. “Hey, where’s the hag?

“That’s not a very nice name, Yuri,” Victor said in a faux whine before smiling a little. “She went to get her room assignments a few minutes, which is where we’re going too. Hers are in the girls’ complex, though.”

“Huh? The separate them by genders?”

“Obviously. Wouldn’t want a bunch of teenagers to get frisky instead of doing their homework.”

“Disgusting,” Yuri scowled, resisting the urge to roll his eyes as he stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Where are our assignments?”

“Boys’ complex, which is on the other side of campus.” Victor looked tired just thinking about it, running a hand through his hair before shrugging it off and looking towards Yuri with a bright smile. “Oh! I forgot to tell you: we’re rooming together!”

“What?!” Yuri blinked furiously. “How do you forget to mention that till the last second? I don’t want to room with you, you talk in your sleep! I bet you even dance in your sleep, too. I’d much rather room with the hag!”

“Only because you like her.” Victor’s smirk was a knowing one and it made Yuri even more furious. “Don’t even try to hide it, Yuri~ You guys are so obvious it hurts me.”

“I’d swallow a hundred knives before liking that mangy woman.” Yuri stuck his tongue out in disgust. “How’d you even arrange that? I thought it was only two people to a room? Did you kick one of the Americans out?”

“Of course not, that’s mean!” Victor looked horrified at the thought. “They’re allowing three people to a room in the larger dorms, further on the left side of the wings. They’re newer too, so they’ll be a lot nicer to live in!”

“Ugh.” Yuri let out a low groan of disbelief. “So I’m sharing a room with you _and_ some peppy American? I’m already sick of this school.”

“You’re so negative, Yuri. Think of the bright side: they’re serving breakfast in an hour!” Victor clapped his hands together like an excited child. “Once we get our room assignments and move our stuff in we can go eat. I heard the mess hall has a lot of really good food.”

“What kinds?” Yuri couldn’t hide his curiosity, his bad mood abandoned for the time being.

“All kinds!” Victor took advantage of his distraction to grab Yuri by the arm and drag him out of the assembling hall. “They have pancakes – the American kind! – and scrambled eggs, and oatmeal, and cereal, and pizza – “

“None of those are fancy,” Yuri complained as he followed Victor. “And pizza isn’t even breakfast food!”

“That’s the beauty of it! Americans can make anything breakfast if they put sugar on it! It’s actually pretty beautiful to watch.”

"Who the hell would out sugar on pizza? That's disgusting." Yuri twisted his face intk a scowl, only halfway focusing on the conversation as he spared a glance over his shoulder to find a group of girl trying to discreetly snap a photo of him. The flash went off as soon as he met eyes with them and he blinked in surprise before he heard them squeal with delight.

Breathing out a long sigh, he turned back around closed himself off, hurrying to catch up with Victor. _No matter where I go, they all see me as untouchable._

He was beginning to feel sick of that feeling.

* * *

Yuuri Katsuki woke up to the sound of his alarm screeching in his ear and without feeling in the right side of his body. Somehow during the night he had ended up with half of his body hanging off the bed and one arm stuck between the dressed, the bed, and the wall.

These new, smaller beds were horrific. Yuuri should have expected that they would downsize to fit the beds in but the new mattresses were astonishingly cheap and refused to give under Yuuri's weight. It was like sleeping on a brick.

Trying to fall asleep the night before had been nearly impossible. In between fretting over the next day and working on late assignments, he hadn't caught more than a few hours of sleep and he was already feeling the effects of it.

Groaning in his throat, Yuuri unwedged his arm and rolled on his other side. A soft, warm bundle of curls whined at the adjustment and wiggled closer to Yuuri, burying his little nose in his arm.

"Vicchan," Yuuri complained groggily as the miniature poodle started to wiggle around. "Stop making a fuss."

The dog whimpered in response, tugging on Yuuri's sheets and scratching them with his paws until the cold air stung his skin. 

"Vicchan...!"

On top of that, the blasted alarm was still blaring in his ear - a steady, nasal _raa raa raa_  that made his ears ring. He threw out and arm and slammed a fist into the alarm, quockly silencing it and causing Vicchan to yip in surprise. Yuuri brought his arm back around the poodle to pull him closer and quiet him.

"Five more minutes. I deserve this," he mumbled into the soft brown fur.

About forty blissful seconds ticked by before Yuuri's eyes flew open and he sat up so quickly he sent Vicchan scrambling off of the bed in horror.

_It was moving in day for the transfer students._

Yuuri wasn't as excited about the Russian transfers as much as his classmates (namely Yuuko who would _not_  stop yammering about some blond hottie) but that didn't matter - he had two more people moving into his room and with a quick glance at the clock he realized he had about - 

Eight seconds until they were supposed to arrive.

Right on cue, three cheerful knocks resounding against the door across the room.

_"Privyet!"_

Yuuri heard a low thud and muttered Russian from a different voice and he was paralyzed, glancing towards Vicchan who was staring intently at the door as if it would collapse with enough squinting.

_Maybe if he didn't say anything... they would go away._

Suddenly there was the sound of keys jingling and being inserted into the lock. Whoch meant they has keys.

Yuuri leaped off of the bed and slammed his back against the door immediately, nearly stepping on Vicchan in his terror. The miniature poodle blinked at him from where he sat, tilting his head, and Yuurk raised a finger to his lips to shush him.

The door nudged a bit against him before stopping. He heard a surprised noise come from the other side in between the sound of his blood pounding in his ears.

_"Huh. It seems like the door is stuck, Yuri."_

For a moment terror seized Yuuri in its grasp. Did they already know his name? But - 

"Let me at it. I'm starving," the other, younger voice responded. 

Yuuri stiffened as he heard them switch places. There was a brief silence before the first speaker interjected - 

"Ah, I really would rather not break the door on our first day - "

"It's not my fault it's stuck," the second snapped. "I've got this."

_Shit._  Yuuri highly doubted that he would be able to withstand the fury of a hungry Russian. He gave the room a quick scan before lunging forward and sweeping the mass of drawings and unfinished projects under his bed in a matter of seconds, desperately trying to arrange it to look somewhat presentable.

His touch hovered for a heartbeat on one of his recent drawings in his caffeine-induced haze from the night before: a sketch of a man with his face lifted to a moonless sky, seeming to be the one projecting all of the light around him. 

The man in the drawing's hair fell around his shoulders in long, silvery strands before wrapping around his torso as chains. His skin was scarred with old lacerations where it was visible and he wore a thin white cover-up that seemed to make the man look even more pale.

It wasn't hard to guess who the focus of his sketch was -

The door slammed open with a loud bang, causing Yuuri to jump to his feet in shock and drop the sketch he was holding behind him. It fluttered to the ground in what could have been slow motion as a young boy sprawled gracelessly on the floor from the momentum of his kick, but he wasn't the focus of Yuuri's attention.

Standing in the doorway with his lips parted in surprise was the same man sketched over and over in Yuuri's work. His elegant form, his pale skin, his eyes the color of the jaded sea - he was as if the ink had walked right off of the page and stood in front of him now.

For a split second Yuuri saw nothing but hours upon hours spent slaving away, creating the silver-streaked man who haunted his dreams. And now he stood here in front of him with a lip curved up slightly, unmoving.

And then he breathed in and the illusion shattered like glass.

This couldn't be the same person he had created. His eyes were wider and more innocent, his lips fuller and his pale skin devoid of any scars or marks. There was no haunted look to those beautiful eyes, no desperation, no longing.

If anything, they were empty.

He breathed in and the clock kept on ticking. The loud blond picked himself off from the floor, seeming to be shaking with barely concealed rage, and the man outside blinked before raising a hand to Yuuri and smiling gently.

"Hello, new roommate!" The silver-haired man's voice was cheerful and too bright - it was hard to look directly at him. "My name is Victor Nikiforov and the one who just broke your door is Yuri Plisetsky. Would you like to come to breakfast with us?"

**Author's Note:**

> all of the places mentioned are purely fictional and created from the depths of my brain - they dont (er, shouldnt) exist in real life ;) they probably dont run like normal art unis either, i wouldnt know :')


End file.
